Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Thu
Innovative solutions in education are emerging from the private sector every day. Business ventures from Teach for America to Khan Academy are changing the way teachers are prepared, the way students learn, and the way institutions use data. These ideas are started by “social entrepreneurs,” people who try to improve lives through solutions that have a market and customers. Students in this course learn about social entrepreneurship, how to identify critical issues in the education-related space, and how to develop their own entrepreneurial solutions accordingly.
Education Studies (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Tue
The course explores how design can respond to environmental problems and climate change. In analyzing past attempts, the course starts with decolonizing turn of the century admirations for primitivism and ends with the cyber punks planning new environments online. Following the work of architects, artists, urban planners, graphic designers and fashionista, the course will review histories of adaptation and ways to design with climate. The class will decolonize modernist design schemes, and focus on better ways to design with climate. We will also devote time to discuss topics such as building closed ecological systems, counterculture designs, cyber environments, sick building syndrome, biomimetics, eco-fashion, earth art, and other methods to design within the realm of nature. The overall objective is twofold; to survey the larger historical context of ecological design and define specific contributions to the climate change debate. Ultimately, the students will be asked to design, develop, and participate in an ecologically driven conceptual final design project of their choice.
Arts Workshops (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Tue
Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Mon
Public relations means different things to different things to different people but it has one undeniable element: communication. This course is concerned with arranging, handling, and evaluating public relations programs. Students work with actual case histories and deal with contemporary topics such as the use of the computer in public relations.
Media, Culture & Communication (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Fri
Viewed as a natural kind or socially constructed, “madness” was defined and treated, examined and controlled, diagnosed and cured according to the spirit of the time. This course follows the varied social imageries of “madness” throughout Western history, from the Hebrew Bible to the contemporary and controversial Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM), also known as “the bible of psychiatry”, in its most recent 5th edition. Students read primary and secondary texts by philosophers, physicians, theologians, jurists, tragedians, novelists, psychologists, social reformers, policy makers, journalists, historians and individuals who suffered madness, known as “experts by experience.” They also observe art and watch films that portray different aspects of madness. Reading includes: the Bible, Plato, Hippocrates, Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Margery Kempe, Erasmus, Robert Burton, Freud, George Canguilhem, Foucault, Ian Hacking, Elaine Showalter among others. The course explores the interaction between the social, cultural, scientific, political as well as economic factors that have shaped the views of “madness” and its treatment while paying ample attention to the history of ideas that informed and, often, framed them.
Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Thu
Dance reflects cultural heritage and is a key to understanding diverse societies. In this arts workshop, students explore dance as it appears on several continents. Dance can be seen as encoded forms of a society’s religious, artistic, political, economic, and familial values. Readings cover issues of globalization, fusion and authenticity. Migration, missionaries, trade routes and the diaspora have led to the creation of new dance forms like “Bollywood” and “Tribal” that are a synthesis of earlier forms. Students are introduced to different dance forms through selected readings, rich collection of video footage and studio practice often lead by various guest artists. After a brief warm-up, the class learns simple steps, floor plans and rhythms from the music and dance cultures being studied. Students choose a dance form as their project and themselves become researchers, performers and creators of new forms.
Arts Workshops (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks